This invention relates to a magazine adapted for holding stacks of sheets, film sheets or similar materials in different formats and which comprises adjustable limiting sides for the material stacked.
Such magazines are, e.g., used in electrophotographic copying machines, duplicating machines or other reproduction equipment, for holding stacks of sheets which are lifted off one at a time. Generally, the sheets are fed in via feed rollers which are mounted on a rotating shaft and are in contact with the uppermost sheet in the stack, engaging it by adhesion due to the friction of the rollers. The leading edge of the uppermost sheet is led over a sheet separating device and is thus lifted off from the remainder of the stack.
German Offenlegungsschrift No. 2,265,108 discloses a sheet feeder mechanism which comprises two plate members arranged in spaced relationship with respect to one another and serving to support the stack. The two plate members may be moved toward or away from one another by means of a manually operated adjusting mechanism, so that it is possible to adapt them to sheets of different widths. For this purpose, each plate member is equipped with an elongated portion provided with toothing which engages with a gear wheel located in a fixed position.
In this sheet feeder mechanism, the contact sides are adjusted in widthwise direction of the stack only, regardless of the length of the stack, and thus only two sides of the stack of sheets are guided by the contact sides. The plate members are moved toward one another or away from one another to adopt particular positions which, although shown by an indicator, are only exactly obtained manually if the operator is sufficiently skilled, since it may easily happen that by moving one of the plate members the gear wheel engaging with the toothing of the other plate member is caused to take one turn too many or too few so that the other plate member is displaced.
In German Offenlegungsschrift No. 2,359,081 a sheet conveyor mechanism is described comprising a support surface which is movably mounted in a frame and has a first edge guiding means rigidly attached to it and second edge guiding means moving relative to the first. The movable edge guiding means travels on a straight line and is either connected to a lever or joined to the support surface by means of a slot and pin assembly. This German Offenlegungsschrift also discloses a container having a support surface and two parallel edge guiding means which may be moved asymmetrically relative to the support surface and having an arrangement compensating for the displacement of the center line between the guiding means relative to the support surface.
The movable edge guiding means is connected to a plate provided with a mark which moves over a scale in the support surface to indicate the distance of the movable edge guiding means from the stationary edge guiding means. The compensating arrangement is necessary, in order to adjust the center line of the sheets in the stack to a fixed reference line in the machine, independently of the particular position of the movable edge guiding means. By means of this compensating arrangement, the center line of the support surface between the two guiding means is kept at a fixed distance from a sheet adjusting arrangement, so that the sheets are invariably pushed forward without adopting an oblique position relative to the center line of the machine.
German Offenlegungsschrift No. 2,358,769 relates to a sheet feeder mechanism comprising a base plate having edge guiding means which are displaceable relative to the base plate in order to contact the lateral edges of a stack. The two edge guiding means are arranged at right angles with respect to one another. Underneath the base plate, adjusting bars for the edge guiding means extend longitudinally and laterally with respect to the stack. There is further a locking member which is mounted so as to be displaceable together with the edge guiding means and is designed to engage in the surface of the bar along the path of the edge guiding means relative to the base plate. Also in this sheet feeder mechanism, the edge guiding means must be individually adjusted, and it depends, in the first place, on the skill of the operator, if the desired position of the adjustable guiding means is to be readily achieved.